Revision Reminders

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COMPOSITION
Dr. J. Halden-Sullivan
A Revision Session: A Strategy

Try to revise a project draft using this plan:

  1. Read your returned, commented-upon draft all the way through. Read the yellow comment inventory sheet all the way through once you’ve read your draft. Just stop and think: what revision would work best for what I want to accomplish with this draft?

  1. Brainstorm and then list on a piece of paper (or on-screen) just what you want to/ need to / perhaps might DO, given the comments and your own sense of the draft’s purpose. Prioritize this to-do list. Put at the top of the list larger global concerns (thesis, support, arrangement); list lower the local concerns of punctuation and sentence construction.

  1. Choose a writing partner (or two). Discuss those prioritized lists one item at a time with each other. Take turns giving each other feedback. Stop and freewrite / brainstorm together particular changes. Start implementing your plan of action.


GENERAL REVISION TIPS

  1. THINK BEFORE YOU START. When you start to revise, have a strong overall sense of what you want to do with the WHOLE DRAFT. Know your message, genre, audience, and purpose.

  1. Work from the global to the local: large substantive concerns to surface-level issues. Why? Because, in making a global change, like choosing a new audience, for example, you may choose to eliminate whole paragraphs where those local problems reside, thereby deleting the errors.

  1. Not all technical errors have been noted in my assessment of your drafts, so PLEASE PROOFREAD YOUR PORTFOLIO DRAFTS WITH CARE!!!!!!!!

  1. This tip is CRITICAL: realize that by making a change on one level of your draft, you may have to alter areas that were never noted in my original comments. For example, if, in revision, you sharply and argumentatively focus a thesis, each paragraph of support may need to accommodate that new angle. If you choose a new particular audience, your examples, explanations, word choice, and arrangement need to address that new reader. Your overall ideas may be the same, but how you shape them will be quite different. Revision demands re-thinking: seeing your draft again, as if for the first time.